“Absolutely.”
Ava scratched his order down on her pad and went off to hand it to the kitchen, leaving Paige with no reason not to be standing there talking to Mitch. The way he looked at her made her self-conscious about the dress, and she wished she’d thrown a T-shirt over it before offering to help Ava.
“Did you get your fried dough?” he asked.
The reference to their earlier meeting made her blush. “Yes. And I went back again later for a second, even though I shouldn’t have.”
“Old Home Day only comes once a year. It’s no fun if you don’t throw willpower to the wind and gorge on carnival food.”
She may have gone back for seconds on the fried dough, but Mitch was the danger to her willpower. If she was going to ride any guy’s tractor or land his plane or play catch-and-release, it would be with him. And that was a good reason to excuse herself.
“You’ve got everything under control,” she said to Ava. “I was thinking about getting some hanging baskets from the garden club this year.”
“Go and have some fun before things wind down too much.”
She smiled and waved to Mitch as she left, and he lifted a hand in response. He didn’t smile, though, which amused her. Didn’t seem that he knew how to take rejection very well, but he’d have to get used to it.
With a sigh, Paige set off down the street. A third fried dough was out of the question, but maybe she could find some kind of decadent treat to pacify herself with. Her body might not think cotton candy or a caramel apple was a good substitute for a man like Mitch, but that was all it was getting anytime soon.
Chapter Five
Mitch needed to get back to work. Desperately. At Northern Star Demolition, if people didn’t do what they were told, he could fire them. His employees listened to him. Family didn’t listen for shit, especially Ryan. Granted, Mitch wasn’t paying him, but the lodge needed a carpenter and his brother was a damn carpenter.
“I’m running a business here, Mitch,” Ryan said, his annoyance coming through loud and clear over the telephone. “I can’t just take off because you think the front steps are a little rickety.”
Mitch tipped his head back on the couch so he could stare at the ceiling, not that he’d find what he was looking for there—which was patience with his brother—but it beat banging his head against the coffee table. “I run a business, too, Ryan. But I’m here. And the problems here go a lot deeper than rickety steps. The place is going to hell.”
“Then hire somebody to do the work. Somebody who doesn’t charge what I get.”
“There’s not a lot of money left to play with here, and us writing a check to the lodge to cover it won’t solve anything in the long run. We need to get together and fix the place up and decide how we’re going to keep it in the black. You can spare a couple of long weekends, at least.”
“I’ll try.”
That might have been fine if Mitch believed him, but he’d worked with enough building contractors to know he was being blown off. “Josh needs help. You remember him? Our youngest brother. The one that’s been running the place with only Rosie to help him?”
“Sounds like he’s been doing a piss-poor job of it, too.”
That’s just what Mitch needed. Another brother with a shitty attitude. What fun it would be to have both of them under the same roof. But the building needed some repair and Ryan was a goddamned builder, so Mitch was going to make him show up, even if he had to go to Massachusetts and drag his ass up there by force. Just on principle.
“I’ll come up Friday night,” Ryan said after the silence dragged on. “I’ll look the place over on Saturday and we can figure out what needs to be done, and then I’ll hit the road early Sunday morning. If the place is going to need more than a couple weekend’s worth of work, I’ll have to adjust my schedule and talk to the guys running my jobs. But I’ll at least look at it over the weekend.”
“I appreciate it,” Mitch said sincerely. “And so will Josh, though he probably won’t tell you so.”
“Tell Rosie I’m coming.” Which was code for telling Rosie that Ryan would be looking for shepherd’s pie and at least two loaves of her banana bread.
“See you Friday. And if it’s dark when you get here, be careful on the stairs. Second step up’s ready to give out.”
Once he’d closed his phone and tossed it on the cushion next to him, Mitch shut his eyes. And thought about Paige. Not deliberately, but she was the first thing that popped into his head and his focus went all to hell. There were about a dozen other things he needed to be doing right that minute, but none of them appealed to him as much as remembering how Paige had looked in the sunlight, sitting on the park bench.
She’d looked hot as hell in the red sundress yesterday, too, but for some reason the image of her lost in a book, with the sun making her hair shine, was the picture that sprang to mind when he thought her name.
If he hadn’t known she had a history of not looking for a good time, he might have slid a little closer to her on the bench. Maybe put his arm around her. Before he got up, he would have kissed her and gotten a promise she’d see him again later. Dinner, maybe a movie, and then he’d spend the night in her bed.
But Paige might have a good reason for not dating, and he wanted to know more about that reason before he treaded somewhere he shouldn’t.
“You sleeping?”
Mitch opened his eyes and smiled at Rose, who was standing in the doorway. “Just resting my eyes.”
“My husband used to say that, just before he started snoring. I made you a couple of fried bologna sandwiches for lunch. Come eat them before the bread gets soggy.”
“Where’s Josh?” he asked as he followed her into the kitchen.
“He’s resting his eyes, too. Fell asleep in a lounge chair in the backyard and, since he hasn’t been sleeping too well at night, I’ll leave him be.”
“Ryan’ll be up Friday night. Just for the weekend, to scope things out.”
“Guess I’d better make sure I’ve got the stuff for shepherd’s pie.”
“Don’t forget the banana bread.” Mitch sat at the table and sank his teeth into a triangle of fried bologna sandwich that was oozing mayo and juices from the thick slabs of tomatoes. He moaned and devoured a second bite before speaking. “Nobody makes sandwiches like this anymore, Rosie. I miss them when I’m gone.”
“Just one of the many reasons you need a wife. One who can make a decent fried bologna sandwich.”
Mitch almost choked on his third bite. “A wife is the last thing I need.”
Rose shook her head, sitting across from him with a sandwich of her own. “I don’t know where we went wrong with you kids.”
“What do you mean? Ryan got married. Liz has been with that meathead, Darren, for years. And Sean’s married now.”
“Ryan also got divorced and, as you so delicately pointed out, Liz is with a man we don’t like. Since you boys weren’t very good at hiding your feelings, we rarely get to see her. And Sean may be happily married now, but one out of five isn’t exactly a winning record.”
“Didn’t realize it was a sport,” he mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich.
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“Not really. I hate to break it to you, Mrs. Cleaver, but not being married doesn’t mean I’m a monk.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. What about kids? How are you going to start a family if you can’t settle on one woman?”
In an unexpected—and unwelcome—flash, Paige Sullivan’s face popped into his head. Since he wasn’t looking for one woman to settle down with, he assumed his subconscious went for the one woman whose home base he most wanted to slide into.
“My job doesn’t really mesh well with settling down,” he said. “I have to travel a lot. And not just a few days or a weekend here and there. I’m talking about weeks at a time.”
“You’ll make it work for the right woman.”
“Guess I haven’t found her yet.”
<
br /> He thought he had once. Pam had not only seemed like Ms. Right, but she’d come pretty damn close to being Mrs. Mitchell Kowalski. Smart, funny and sexy as hell, she’d pushed past his habit of avoiding commitment, and it was only a few months before she moved in and started turning his apartment into a home.
Unfortunately, home was mostly a place he visited between jobs, and Pam really ramped up the nagging about him being gone all the time once he put a diamond on her finger. It had been a pivotal time in building Northern Star Demolition, and he’d kept telling her he’d eventually be able to travel less. Instead, eventually, she’d let another man keep his side of the bed warm and, when Mitch found out, gave him an ultimatum. Her, or his work. Even if he hadn’t had contracts to honor and people depending on him for their paychecks, he wasn’t giving up his business, so that had been the end of that.
Since Pam, he’d gone back to doing things the way that had always gotten him the physical pleasure without the emotional pain—letting the ladies know right up front he wasn’t sticking around. A few laughs, a few orgasms and they were smiling when he kissed them goodbye.
“When you do find the right woman,” Rosie said, “bring her by and I’ll teach her how to make fried bologna sandwiches the way you like them.”
“It’s a deal,” he told her, just to end the discussion.
He wasn’t going to find the right woman anytime soon because of the simple fact he wasn’t even looking.
* * *
Paige usually used the quiet time between breakfast and lunch to restock condiments and help clean up out back, as well as to recover from feigning indifference to Mitch, who seemed to be making breakfast at the diner a habit. Today, however, she was playing bartender. Not because she was serving booze—not having a liquor license took care of that issue—but because she was listening to Mallory Miller’s woes.
The chief’s wife worked for a law office in the city so, with the long commute, Paige rarely saw her during the week, especially on a non-holiday Monday. Mal said she’d called in sick—as in sick of her crappy life, though she hadn’t told them that. And Paige poured them each a cup of coffee and offered a shoulder to cry on.
It wasn’t until Carl hollered out he was going on break that Mal really got into what was bothering her, most of which Paige already knew. Drew wanted children, Mallory didn’t, and they weren’t speaking to each other. And hadn’t been for a while.
“I think I should be enough for Drew,” Mal said. “That our life together should be enough. Why do the last ten years become irrelevant and worth throwing away if we don’t have kids?”
Paige, who’d been leaning against the counter, topped off their coffees and set the carafe back on the burner in a hopefully-not-too-obvious bid for more time to think. She was supposed to be listening, not being put on the spot. What the hell did she know about marriage? Not much. “Did you ask him that?”
“I’m not asking him anything.”
“You do realize you can’t fix anything if you won’t talk to each other, right?”
Mal shrugged. “I said everything I had to say on the matter. I don’t want to be a mother.”
That’s where it got hazy for Paige. It wasn’t a decision Mal had suddenly come to and sprung on the police chief. She’d known all along she didn’t want to have kids but had let him believe she did rather than risk losing him. The entire marriage had been built on false advertising, and Drew hadn’t known it. But Mal had a point, too. They’d had ten good years of marriage. Did not having children really erase that?
“I thought I’d grow into it,” Mal told her. “The idea of having kids, I mean. I thought I’d get used to being married and eventually feel the urge to be a mother and Drew would never know how I’d felt. But the urge never came.”
“But you can understand why Drew’s upset, right?”
Mal’s lips tightened. “I understand being upset. But throwing our marriage away? I should be as important to him as children that are nothing but hypothetical, don’t you think?”
“I’d like to think so,” Paige said, being honest without definitively taking sides—the key to peaceful business ownership in a small town.
The bell over the door jingled, and Paige stifled a sigh of relief. Mal wasn’t going to air her dirty marital laundry if there were other customers in the place. But she’d been relieved too soon. It was Katie Davis, which meant the conversation would continue. But at least, if she could manufacture some busywork, Paige wouldn’t have to be a part of it.
She liked Mallory Miller. Over the last two years, they’d grown closer than acquaintances, though most of their interaction was at the diner or as part of a group, usually with Hailey and Katie or at movie night. But if anybody asked, Paige would call her a friend.
She liked Drew too, though, and their marital problems weren’t really a black-and-white issue. If Drew had cheated—or Mallory, for that matter—it would be easy to take sides. In this particular case, however, Paige wasn’t sure what to say.
And she still had high hopes Drew and Mal would reconcile and, if that happened, she didn’t want to be the bad guy who’d tried to talk her out of it.
“What are we talking about?” Katie asked once she’d pulled up a counter seat and Paige had made her a large vanilla Coke.
“How much men suck,” Mal told her.
Katie snorted. “I don’t have that much time.”
Paige still hadn’t figured out what the deal was with Katie. She didn’t date any more than Paige did, but she wasn’t “news.” The pretty blonde had a healthy number of male friends and was generally considered one of the guys. So much so, in fact, Paige had heard some speculation as to whether Katie Davis even liked guys. Paige knew she did, and she also suspected Katie had already given her heart to somebody in particular and the guy hadn’t figured it out yet. Katie, however, would neither confirm nor deny that theory.
“I think I’m going to move out,” Mallory said, and something in the way she said it made Paige believe she’d just that second reached that conclusion.
“Make him do the moving,” Katie said.
“If I move to the city, I won’t have that long commute anymore. And he’s the police chief, so he’ll be staying here. It makes more sense for me to move than him.” Tears began streaming down Mal’s cheeks, and Paige took the coffee mug out of her trembling hands, setting it on the counter. “I can’t believe it’s over.”
“I still think you should try counseling before you make a decision like that,” Paige said quietly.
“Yeah, I want to tell a total stranger I’ve been lying to my husband for ten years. And then I can listen to Drew and the therapist tell me I’m a bad person and that everything would be okay if I have a baby.”
Katie stopped sucking on her straw to shake her head. “I’ve never been, but I’m pretty sure marriage counseling doesn’t work like that.”
Paige had to agree, but she was trying to extricate herself from the conversation, not dig herself in deeper, so she kept that to herself. Then, thankfully, a few guys who worked for a local construction outfit walked through the door and she had an excuse to leave the counter.
It was a little depressing, honestly, to join in a men suck party. She didn’t think they sucked, despite her current ban on becoming involved with one herself. Especially in this case, where she didn’t think Drew had done anything wrong. He was understandably upset that his wife had been lying to him since before they’d even married.
But she’d seen women in Mal’s situation before. One woman in particular. Paige’s mother was the master of burying her own wants and needs to please a man. Donna Sullivan never worried about the future—if she’d eventually grow to hate herself or resent the man, or what would happen if the day came when she couldn’t hide her true self and the man discovered she wasn’t who he’d thought she was. All that mattered was that the man not leave her right then.
A few more people wandered in as she poured sodas for the construction
guys, so she didn’t get a chance to drop back into the conversation before Katie had to get back to the barbershop and Mallory went on with whatever came next in her non-sick day.
She kept busy until two, when Ava showed up. Ava was almost sixty, though she was fighting a valiant battle against the years with deep-chestnut hair dye and a variety of facial creams she bought from infomercials, but she loved waiting tables and she was good at it.
When given the choice as they’d prepared for the diner’s grand reopening, Ava had chosen the two-to-closing shift. Her husband had died suddenly of a heart attack the year before and she’d said those hours—the after-work, dinner and evening-news hours—were the time she missed him the most, so she’d rather keep busy. Paige hadn’t had a preference, so she was the one knocking her alarm clock across the nightstand at four-thirty every morning.
“Did Mitch come see you this morning?” Ava whispered to her when they passed each other at the pie case.
“No. Why would he?”
Ava winked. “Just wondering.”
As she finished cleaning her tables so she could get the hell out of there, Paige mumbled under her breath. It would be a lot easier not to think about Mitch Kowalski and his killer smile and pretty eyes if people didn’t talk about him all the damn time.
* * *
“I need a ride into town.”
Mitch looked up from the ledger book he was stuck skimming through since his brother thought Excel was something you did in sports, and saw Josh standing in the office doorway, leaning on his crutches. He looked a lot better than he had the night Mitch arrived in town and his attitude had improved a little, but he was still sadly lacking in charm. And manners.
“Please,” Josh added before Mitch could call him on it.
“You couldn’t have thought of that before I went to the diner for breakfast?”
“I didn’t know you were going, though I should have since you go every damn day. Will you give me a ride or not?”
“Sure.” Mitch could see the muscles in Josh’s jaw flexing as he closed the ledger book and set it aside, but the tension was unavoidable.
All He Ever Needed Page 6
